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Sun Microsystems Operating Systems Software

What's Coming in Solaris 10 383

Posted by michael from the lunch-getting-eaten-by-linux dept.
raptor21 writes "Ace's hardware has an article with feature list of technologies in Solaris 10 or whatever it is called today. Interesting stuff like DTrace, FireEngine, military grade security and a new filesystem called ZFS, Zetabyte File System."
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What's Coming in Solaris 10 More

What's Coming in Solaris 10

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  • Let me guess (Score:3, Funny)

    by SpanishInquisition ( 127269 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @02:50PM (#7561175) Homepage Journal
    More SCO IP?
  • ...is to refer to it as "Solaris X" or "Solaris OS X". That way it can join the ranks of:

    Mac OS X
    JBuilder X
    MegaMan X

    And others!

  • Security? (Score:4, Informative)

    by coolmacdude ( 640605 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @02:53PM (#7561218) Homepage Journal
    I thought it already had military grade security. After all Solaris was the first OS to earn Common Criteria certification.

    • Re:Security? (Score:2, Informative)

      by elmegil ( 12001 )
      Trusted Solaris is currently a seperate release. It is to be integrated.
    • WinNT (or was it 2K?) earned a CC certification not all that long ago... Let's think carefully about what sort of security standard this could possibly be.

      As I recall, CC is a measurement of the security of a particular configuration and patch combination of an OS, and has nothing whatsoever to say about the overall security model/software quality/break-in resistance of that OS generally.

      So the patch level that was evaluated for NT to get the CC was the ONLY patch level for which the CC applies. If you
  • A hook into Phoenix's DRM BIOS on the x86 ports ?

    Just kidding.

    wbs.

  • Military grade security? (Score:5, Funny)

    by TimboJones ( 192691 ) <timbojones.timbojones@net> on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @02:55PM (#7561245) Homepage
    Isn't that where the case is internally wired to explosives so that all the hardware and data will be incinerated if an unauthorized user tries to crack it open?

    Maybe the military has various grades of security. They shouldn't, though -- everything should explode. What good is the military if nothing explodes?!
    • The US military doesn't go in much for booby-traps.

      In the event that a secure installation seems about to be overrun the sensitive equipment is stacked up and destroyed with WP grenades.

      You'll be sad to learn that WP grenades don't explode.

      Sorry to disappoint.

      -Peter

      • My abandon ship station (Score:5, Interesting)

        by A nonymous Coward ( 7548 ) * on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @03:35PM (#7561685)
        I was a computer operator on a carrier long long ago. The computer room was two decks under the flight deck, right under the arresting gear ... pretty high up. My abandon ship station was to take a fire ax and whack the computer. I guess that old supply computer had too much vital technology. It wasn't the data in the computer, because it had no permanent storage, it was a tape operating system, and my job did not include whacking the tapes. So they were more concerned with the enemy capturing our carrier and recovering the computer technology than recovering the records of how much toilet paper we used. Must have been the water tight seals around the tape drive doors -- they claimed it could operate under water, tho how deep I never heard. And being so high up, 40 or so feet above the waterline ... if that had ever gotten under water, I wasn't planning on being the duty operator.
      • the sensitive equipment is stacked up and destroyed with WP grenades.

        Once again demonstrating that WordPerfect is a VERY powerful application.

  • It's spooky (Score:5, Funny)

    by HarveyBirdman ( 627248 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @02:56PM (#7561251) Journal
    I ran a beta here at work, and an ex-girlfriend and a couple dead grandparents appeared. Then I saw George Clooney. It was wild, man.

    It was beta, though, so I couldn't talk to them.

    • I ran a beta here at work, and an ex-girlfriend and a couple dead grandparents appeared. Then I saw George Clooney. It was wild, man.

      Yeah.. George Clooney is only in the latest version, though.
      All in all, I wouldn't say it's worth the upgrade, even if the old one only had russian-language support.

  • What we'd all like to see: (Score:3, Funny)

    by BigDumbAnimal ( 532071 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @02:58PM (#7561272)
    Profitablity?

  • Dear Sun (Score:4, Funny)

    by Letter ( 634816 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @02:59PM (#7561295)
    Dear Sun,

    Can I run the ZFS (Zebra file system) in a RAID-0 configuration?

    Thanks,
    Stripes

    • Re:Dear Sun (Score:3, Funny)

      by k12linux ( 627320 )
      Dear Sun,

      Can I run the ZFS (Zebra file system) in a RAID-0 configuration?

      Dear Solaris customer:

      Yes, all RAID levels other than 1 (due to lack of striping) are supported. I am happy to inform you that RAID-1 will also be supported in our next release (code named albino.)

      Thank you for your interest in our products, Sun.

  • sorry i'm a cynic (Score:5, Funny)

    by happyfrogcow ( 708359 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @03:00PM (#7561298)
    Not all of these features will be available with the initial release

    Yes, I too am releasing an operating system. It will have the ability to run buggy code without compromising any other part of the system(*). It will improve performance of buggy code as well, rewritting it to accomodate your Bugless Needs(TM)(*).

    * Not all of these features will be available with the initial release

  • Athlon 64 will breathe new life into Solaris (Score:5, Interesting)

    by illumin8 ( 148082 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @03:03PM (#7561341) Journal
    Wait until you see what is coming down the pipe from Sun. The new Athlon 64 workstations and servers will breathe new life into Solaris. For the first time you will be able to run a fully 64-bit kernel with all of the stability and reliability of Solaris, along with all of the advanced features of Solaris. Features like this won't even make their way into Linux for another 5 years or so.

    Solaris 10 will be the first release of Solaris that supports native 64-bit mode on the new AMD Opteron and Athlon 64 processors.

    Not to mention the ability to address terabytes of memory without using PAE hacks.

    The only question in my mind is: Will you be able to run the IA-64 port of Solaris 10 on a home-built Athlon 64 box, or will it require Sun hardware to run?
    • IA-64 != x86-64

      IA-64 is Intel's Itanium line, whereas x86-64 includes the Opterons and Athlon64s.

    • Re:Athlon 64 will breathe new life into Solaris (Score:4, Insightful)

      by WatertonMan ( 550706 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @03:12PM (#7561443)
      Actually I believe the advantage Suns brings to hardware is in a lot of thoroughput. That's partially why they can offer slow CPUs. Their main market is servers which aren't typically CPU bound as much as I/O bound. They have very nice multiprocessor systems. I was harping on them earlier, but they definitely do have their place. However they are being pressured on the low end by Linux and so forth. Their lowend offerings are primarily development workstations to get code ready for servers. But they've shot themselves in the leg to a degree there by making it somewhat unattractive to develop for them. (Yes people do it of course but it isn't always nice)

      I suspect that Sun can't afford the development costs of remaining competitive with IBM, Intel and perhaps even AMD. We'll see them shifting servers to AMD more and more. (Although I'd be surprised if the SPARC disappears anytime soon) This kind of strategic alliance with AMD makes a lot of sense.

      As to non Sun made AMD systems, that's an interesting question. I'd think it would be in their interests to sell or perhaps even give away Solaris 10 for AMD. That'd get people using them instead of Linux but allow them to sell their high end servers. The problem is whether other companies start selling nice workstations and servers that would cut into Sun's hardware. It seems like they are still between a rock and a hard place in certain ways.

    • Features like this won't even make their way into Linux for another 5 years or so.

      Let's hope so. If we are really lucky, most of them will never make it into Linux because they are useless bloat for almost all users.

      Let Sun go for the really, really high end of million dollar hardware running specialized operating systems. I'm happy with Linux being the operating system for huge compute clusters made out of commodity hardware, and for that, Linux is more than enough already.
  • Why not include a driver for say some 3Com cards on the pci models. I have installed Linux on sun boxes just because Linux can use the hardware I give it. Solaris Can't.

  • There really WILL be an "10"? (Score:4, Funny)

    by mcrbids ( 148650 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @03:05PM (#7561359) Journal
    Apple couldn't do it. Instead they call it "OS/X". (See "Oh Sex" for a pronunciation guide)

    RedHat couldn't do it. Instead they call it "Fedora Core 1". (Pronunciation? Don't bother)

    but Sun can do it! Think of the possibilities, though...

    They could have "Solaris X" as the Unix system, and "Solarux" as their Linux distro! What a way to leverage their brand name onto something that's unrelated, and works even better!

    I mean.. talk about SEXY... you'd pronounce it "Solari-Sex"...

    Well? Why couldn't they?

    Wait.... Maybe, just maybe.... who could say "Solaris X" without saying "Solaris-Sucks"????

  • Interesting business strategy (Score:5, Funny)

    by mackman ( 19286 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @03:05PM (#7561364)
    It looks like Sun is adding compelling new features that make Solaris 10 a more powerful alternative than Linux. I wonder if offering a better product is a valid business model. Seems like suing your competitors and their customers is cheaper (no pesky high-paid engineers) and ,uch better for the stock price. I'd suggest anyone investing SUNW should instead buy into a company with a proven business model like SCOX.

  • FireEngine (Score:2, Interesting)

    by ENOENT ( 25325 )
    That's what I want: a free fire engine with every mainframe I buy. A nice Tonka fire engine would sway my decision towards Sun products, especially if they threw in a fire man's hat.

    Woo hoo! Off to play with my toy trains!

    Thank you for your time.

    Sincerely yours,
    The CTO of your company

  • Still playing catch-up (Score:3, Informative)

    by darkcompanion ( 83362 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @03:09PM (#7561418) Homepage
    Lots of cool sounding projects names, but I still don't see a lot of exciting features. I'm under the impression that Sun is still playing catch up with other major Unix players. Dtrace, a new monitoring tool ? Sheesh, these things are already implemented by most sysadmins. Oh, and we can now dynamically create soft partitions? God, LVM had this for years. Just try increasing a partition size under Solaris8 (or 9) with Disksuite, without switching to single user mode. In HP/UX or Linux, that's just 3 or 4 commands.

    • Dtrace, a new monitoring tool ? Sheesh, these things are already implemented by most sysadmins.

      I think you should give dtrace a bit more credit that this. It looks very cool to me

    • Re:Still playing catch-up (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @03:30PM (#7561650)
      Soft partitioning is for grown ups who use big computers. It has nothing to do with disks. It is dynamically changing a "virtual" machine within a piece of hardware that is visible to an os. For example you could take a 6800, and have 3 different instances of solaris running on it. If you needed more cpu in one of the "partitions", you can shrink one of the other partitions, and add cpu's to the one in need. Its the same thing as a domain on a e10k, except its at a software level instead of hardware.

    • Re:Still playing catch-up (Score:3, Informative)

      by pmz ( 462998 )
      Sheesh, these things are already implemented by most sysadmins.

      My impression of dtrace is that is allows sysadmins to implement even better and finer grained tools. One example provided by a Sun engineer was about tracking down very short-lived processes that were causing a system slowdown (very hard to detect with regular ps-like tools and top).

      The other features are both catch-up and leap-frog. Also, how many new deployments of HP-UX are there? Further, Linux really doesn't have all the features of

  • SUN Hardware Co. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @03:11PM (#7561432)
    I remember going to a comdex eons ago and asking someone from the SUN booth about how they could afford giving away StarOffice (5.1, I think). I was told that SUN was primarily a hardware company, and that the more exposure they got, even from software, would create more hardware sales.

    Then there was Linux (and BSD)...who pretty much popularized the *nix on x86 architecture and suddenly SUN was a wee bit worried. They tried Solaris 9 for x86, then pulled it back later on. They cozied up to Linux, then backpedaled by saying they're only offering it because customers asked for it. Then they ink a deal with China for oodles of their Java Desktop with Linux inside.

    Now they have a feature list for Solaris 10 out. Does anyone else think that they're competing with themselves? If they're truly a hardware company, wouldn't they focus on Solaris 10, market their hardware for reliability, stability, yadda yadda, and just keep up the cobalt raqs for "low-end" servers?

    They're not a software-as-a-service business model. They're not really even an OS Software "manufacturer" business. They're a hardware company who has tried their hand at everything from a programming language (Java), an office suite (staroffice), and OS/desktop (Solaris, Java Desktop).

    When Linux pulls through, *nix systems that rely on non-x86 hardware are going to wither and die. So which is it, SUN? Are you with linux or against it? You can't keep talking out of both sides of your mouth for much longer.

    • Re:SUN Hardware Co. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by RevRa ( 1728 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @04:11PM (#7562051) Journal
      I was told that SUN was primarily a hardware company, and that the more exposure they got, even from software, would create more hardware sales

      Because if customers want to use Sun systems for their shop, but there isn't an office product that runs on it they still have to have PC's lying around. If Sun supplies them with the hardware, OS, and decent office tools, it's yet another reason the customer can use Sun.

      suddenly SUN was a wee bit worried. They tried Solaris 9 for x86, then pulled it back later on

      Uhm. I've got a copy of Solaris 2.6 x86 downstairs in my software library. If you think that Solaris 9 was the first x86 release of Solaris, you're not very educated on Sun products/offerings. The reason Sun "pulled back" from x86 is because they were ready to relinquish the x86 market to Linux. Customers SCREAMED at Sun NOT to do this. They WANTED Solaris reliability and functionality on x86 CPU's and didn't trust Linux completely. Sun happily obliged.

      Does anyone else think that they're competing with themselves?

      Huh?

      They're not a software-as-a-service business model. They're not really even an OS Software "manufacturer" business. They're a hardware company who has tried their hand at everything from a programming language (Java), an office suite (staroffice), and OS/desktop (Solaris, Java Desktop).

      Yes. Your one-stop-shopping place for all of your workplace needs. You need the hardware? Got that. You need an OS that offers seamless integration with the hardware? Here 'ya go. Want a built-in filesystem with the features of VXFS without having to pay a license fee to Veritas? ZFS comes in 10. Want to write your code in one language and run it on all of your other systems? Use Java. OS Desktop? That's just icing designed to take more $ from Bill G's pocket.

      When Linux pulls through

      Linux is a good OS and I am no stranger to it whatsoever, but it has a long way to go to catch up to Solaris. This announcement about Solaris 10 is demonstrating just that.

      Oh, and by the way. Some of us in my office are playing with the internal-only betas of Solaris 10. Very sexy IMNSHO. For the heck of it, I started calling it SunOS X as a parody of MacOS X. The rest of the engineers on my team have followed suit, though as of yet none of us know what the "official" release name will be. :-)

      ***
      Disclaimer
      ***
      I DO work for Sun but this is my PERSONAL opinion. It is NOT intended in any way, shape, or form to be construed as an official Sun position.

  • Fire Engine TCP/IP stack (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Alomex ( 148003 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @03:15PM (#7561482) Homepage


    According to the related article, it includes a complete rewrite of the TCP/IP stack. Conventional wisdom has it that all TCP/IP stacks out there borrowed heavily from the BSD code.

    Will Fire Engine then be the first non-BSD TCP/IP stack?

    • ARRRRGGHHHH!!!! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by pr0ntab ( 632466 ) <pr0ntab@gma i l .com> on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @03:53PM (#7561861) Journal
      How many times does someone have to clarify the point that the linux kernel's TCP/IP stack has been rewritten AT LEAST once since it had BSD roots?

      And we are to ignore VxWorks as well? It's stack is specially designed for embedded workloads.

      Then there's Cisco's OS. Oh, and Windows NT 5.x stack is completely different than the BSD one. It's just the sockets interface that's grafted on top of it that carried some Berkerley copyrights.

      Now that I think about it, it seems that only operating systems using the BSD TCP/IP stack are the BSDs themselves! (MacOSX included)

  • beating a dead horse (Score:3)

    by penguin7of9 ( 697383 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @03:17PM (#7561500)
    Solaris's problems are not in robustness or scalability--it already handles those very well. Trouble is, so do Linux and BSD and a lot of other systems. Arguably, not as well as Solaris, but well enough.

    By analogy, sure, a Ferrari is a nice car, but for a daily commute, a Honda Civic is both cheaper and more practical, and it really doesn't matter that it doesn't go as fast as the Ferrari in theory. With software like Solaris 10, Sun is creating ever more expensive Ferraris.

    • Re:beating a dead horse (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I think you're wrong. Solaris isn't the fastest OS around, Linux and BSD beat it most of the time. However, it's much more stable, more robust, and scales far better, as you said.

      What I am saying is Linux is a nice car for daily commute, but Solaris is a better investment.

      Sun and Solaris have more on Linux and BSD then just an OS. Sun provides great support, hardware, compatibilty with past versions of it's software, Java, and more.

      It's apples to oranges.

      Fortress of Insaniy [homeunix.org]
      Blogzine [blogzine.net]

  • Cost... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Namaseit ( 668654 )
    Yah and it's going to cost your left nutsack, or ovary if your a woman.

  • ok see... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by JoeLinux ( 20366 ) <joelinux@ g m a i l . c om> on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @03:19PM (#7561523)
    This is a case of people actually providing a product that gives the customers something new and exciting.

    Bravo SUN. And they recognize Linux as having a place.

    To be honest, I'd rather have a SUN monopoly than a MS monopoly. At least the software would be a bit more stable.

  • Holy crap (Score:5, Informative)

    by Saint Aardvark ( 159009 ) * on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @03:21PM (#7561547) Homepage Journal
    Take a look at the link to the Usenet posting [google.com] on Dtrace. Jesus Christ almighty, it's like they saw inside my head and gave me The One True Tool.

    [puts on tin foil cap]

  • Aha! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Fefe ( 6964 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @03:31PM (#7561665) Homepage
    So Solaris gets capabilies. Only, what, five years after Linux? And they finally abandon that obsolete slow-as-molasses file system of theirs? The level of technology leadership they are displaying is nothing short if breathtaking!1!!

    On a lighter node, the article says their current partitioning scheme is software based. Good to know. Fits well in the general impression I got from them, with their shell script based "high availability" solution, and their industry leading "backup" solutions. There really is no need to know more than this about Sun and their software.
    Long live admintool!
    • you should really turn on logging... it increases the speed threefold. It's retarded that they don't shout it across the hills (you have to stumble across it in the manpages or newsgroups). just add "logging" to the mount options in vfstab.

  • Zetta != Zeta (Score:5, Informative)

    by slavemowgli ( 585321 ) on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @03:31PM (#7561666) Homepage
    That's "Zettabyte", guys, not "Zetabyte", as the referenced article correctly states, too. Now go and write down the SI prefixes 100 times.
  • I was hoping for a yotta byte capable filesystem.
  • Accepting for the sake of argument that a SolariX/Opteron system will be more secure, featureful, stable, and pretty than a DIY Linux/Opteron box, will it really be so much better that people will actually pay significant extra money for it?

    Compared to, say, a 2.6 based linux box with an SMP Opteron board.

    The entry level server market is a low margin minefield, and I'm not sure folks are going to want to pay for stuff (extra securty, huge filesystem support, a Sun badge on the case, etc.) they don't think

  • Sun is giving me a little SGI deja-vu (Score:4, Interesting)

    by TempusMagus ( 723668 ) * on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @05:11PM (#7562723) Homepage Journal
    Is it just me or does a lot of what Sun is doing remind you of what SGI went through in the high-end visualization market a few years back?

    Obviously things are not DIRECTLY equatable but I can't stop thinking about the comparison.

    Couldnt you say that in both cases that their niche erroded due to low or no cost competitors?

    Both had some great software. Could Sun having Solaris and Java be somewhat equateble to SGI's OpenGL and Irix?

    Both companies had hardware at the heart of their business models at one point.

    Sun seems to be doing what SGI did in trying to do a bunch of different things to pull itself out while in the process losing focus and STILL having hardware at the heart of the business model.

    SGI is obviously still around. If you look at their website now, you can see they are targetting a much smaller niche than they used to (supercomputers). The day of thinking that an o2 will be on the desk of every college student has long passed. I'm sure SGI never thought they would be promoting Linux-based supercomputers on their homepage 5 years ago - lord only knows what Sun will have on theirs homepage 5 years hence.

  • Military Grade? (Score:5, Funny)

    by TempusMagus ( 723668 ) * on Tuesday November 25, 2003 @05:28PM (#7562944) Homepage Journal
    Is there any official definition of what "Military Grade" means? Does the fact that it is used by the Military automatically mean it is "Military Grade".

    I'm starting to think that "Military Grade" is about to join the ranks of such descriptors as "Low-Fat", "Broadcast Quality", "New and Improved" and "Internet Ready".

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